And this was Pay TV's account of itself: "Grand Designs Australia (158,000/173,000 *including plus two hours) on The LifeStyle Channel was the highest rated broadcast for the week followed and Live: Football A-League Brisbane V Sydney (132,000) on FOX SPORTS 1. Also in the top 10 non-sport broadcasts: The Walking Dead S3 (113,000/118,000*) on FX and Pawn Stars (84,000) on A&E. FOX8 attracted viewers to Family Guy (84,000/117,000), The Simpsons (82,000/108,000*), Modern Family (81,000/103,000*) and Futurama (79,000/102,000*). New Tricks (73,000/81,000*) on UKTV, Megatruckers (70,000) on A&E and NCIS (68,000/94,000*) on TV1 rounded out the top 10 non-sport. Year to date share of viewing is 55.3% in STV homes, 22.4% in metro and 18.1% in regional homes (6am-12mn)."

The X Factor will stay on as long as the audience stays above 1 million

The first time a movie has pulled more than a million viewers this year was Saturday night. Check out our chart to see which one it was. On Friday, New Tricks was a surprise: Below a million last week, 1.1 million this week. Why are New Tricks viewers so changeable? On Thursdays, no program pulls more than a million viewers. We're all watching our recordings of Homeland, Good Wife, and Justified. On Wednesday, the final episode of the Scandi-noir murder mystery The Bridge gave SBS2 one of the biggest audiences in its history, even if the show had been ridiculously complicated and full of red herrings.

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The OED defines the verb "to randle" as "to outstay one's welcome; to have twice as many episodes as necessary to communicate the message; to remain on air long after the shark has been jumped, caught, filleted, battered, fried and consumed with chips". But at least The X-Factor keeps pulling audiences, which cannot be said of Randling.

Channel Seven has decided to be a risk taker. It revealed on Tuesday that it will wait till next year to show the latest seasons of Revenge and Downton Abbey, both of which have been around a while in their countries of origin. Channel Ten could not afford to take that risk, but Seven obviously feels it is so far ahead of the game, it does not need to worry about a few geeks stealing these hot shows online.

That's Shirley MacLaine in the Downton Abbey limo

The Devil's Dust, the ABC's courageous coverage of the asbestos cover-up, did not pull the same audience as Jack Irish, but performed creditably and improved its audience on day two. Channel Ten's Sunday strategy of showing two episodes of Homeland, in order to bring Australian broadcast times closer to US broadcast times and thus save cliffhanging geeks the trouble of stealing the episodes online, seems to have worked. The audience rose 90,000.

Channel Nine's strategy of trying to grab the young and groovy demographic by stretching Hamish and Andy to 90 minutes and delaying 60 Minutes by 30 minutes and then showing The Social Network almost worked, except that those groovers find 60M boring and had already seen TSN, so they went over to Ten for Modern Family and then Homeland. And we can add 207,000 to Homeland's score to include those who record for later viewing.

This is the daily update of The Sun-Herald's Who We Are column by David Dale, who teaches Communications at UTS, Sydney. He is the author of The Little Book of Australia - A snapshot of Who We Are (Allen and Unwin). For continuing conversation about Australian attitudes, bookmark The Tribal Mind.

12 comments so far

I was very pleasantly surprised by the outstanding acting, writing and production of "The Devil's Dust", and recommend tonight's showing even to those who missed the first night. It was hard to imagine that Bernie Banton's story would be so interesting and compelling, but the ABC has done an outstanding job of bringing this most important story to us.

Commenter

James D

Location

Chipping Norton

Date and time

November 12, 2012, 12:55PM

Yes, James. A very good mini series and looking forward to seeing part 2 tonight. Well acted and scripted and makes my blood boil to think how much James Hardie got away with.

I grew up in a fibro house and remember distinctly my dad and brothers pulling walls down and dust flying everywhere, no masks or any safety gear. No one told anyone back them that you shouldn't do these things. Some how so many of us from the era seem to have gotten away with this sort of casual expousure. But to see those poor men that worked in the factory and the way they were covered in dust, that they then took home to their wives and children. It is rather obscene really that Hardie's were allowed to treat workers with such utter contempt. Then there were the poor aboriginals in that town. Guess no one gave a toss.

Great work, ABC in bringing this back to our attention again. Love that Aunty!

Commenter

em

Date and time

November 12, 2012, 3:55PM

While I agree that the corporate culture was and is profits above all else, none of this could have happened if we had government actually working on behalf of the people. These problems had been known off for many years and it wasn't just Hardie's, think CSR, various State governments which were happy enough to license the mining of asbestos and take the royalties. The whole system was corrupted by money and nothing else. Sadly I doubt very much that anything has changed over the years.

Commenter

Zjonn

Date and time

November 14, 2012, 2:20PM

A special bravo to Matt Peacock who did not give up.

And the story shows the hypocrisy of our media continually whining about unions and small amounts of money on credit cards while people are still dying because of the Killer Company who knew they were killing people and didn't care.

It's not just the story of Bernie, it's the story of generations of us exposed to this filthy stuff by corrupt and rotten corporations for gain.

Next time you want to whinge about Craig Thomson, remember James Hardie.

Commenter

Marilyn

Date and time

November 12, 2012, 3:27PM

I watched Michael Palin's little show about Brazil and started with Devil's Dust as a fill-in before Bones, but never got there. Was it just me, or did anyone else think that Michael Peacock was smoking a joint when he was first seen editing the tape for a show? ..

It was from that point on that I was hooked. I thought I knew the story, but, like many I suspect all I knew were the latter stages, to be seen tonight. An insidious killer, a mindless, self-indulgent beneficiary that played on victims ill-founded loyalty and a lot of ill-informed innocent victims. I wasn't aware that Bernie had received a payout. Most on receiving theirs probably just got on with what was left of their lives, but not Bernie.

I'll be watching part 2 tonight, and suggest that everyone else do as well (and we all know what weight THAT carries). Thank you Matt Peacock, and dear ol' Auntie.

I didn't watch the 'The Devil's Dust' because I was watching 'Homeland' which is dancing on the edge of a knife. On one side is credibility. On the other side is a shark. Still enjoying it and glad that we are now pretty much up to date with The Rest of The World, but... things are getting a bit dicey.

Happened to notice a promo for 'MasterChefMegalomaniacs', because they played it every two minutes. Marco Pierre White is extremely unlikable. I assume they are going to keep playing it for the next three months or so. They've learned nothing about promotion. Annoy people endlessly until they switch to 'The X Factor'. Effective. I predict another mediocre flop, if there is still a channel Ten to keep churning out the mediocre flops next year....

Commenter

darren

Date and time

November 13, 2012, 6:57AM

Darren, yes, Homeland is great, but could go either way. Not sure where their going with it this year, but so far interesting to enjoy the ride.

And I have to agree. The few times I have had Ten on the last few days I have seen those damn promotional ads for Marco Pierre White. Is he going to be a judge on MC next year or is he getting his own show? It's all a bit vague. And annoying. Why do networks think we have to be hit over the head repeatedly with their stupid "coming soon" type of ads? By the time the show is on, we don't even care anymore. They are also flogging to death Glee at the moment. I am over it. Networks, you guys wonder why people aren't watching much anymore. It's this type of thing that have people scurrying to the internet. Stop the endless promotional ads months before the show starts. It's ANNOYING!!!! Don't you lot understand the term "overkill" ???????

Rant over now.

Commenter

em

Date and time

November 13, 2012, 8:27AM

Yairs, Em. One thing I will say for 'Homeland' is that, if you can sort of not get hung up on the improbablities (traitorous congressman promises to be good, so let's let him go and see what happens etc), the latest twists and turns have blown the field of suspects wide open, per who's informing who and all that (if a field can be exploded).

Re: Marco Pierre White and Promos Attack!, I think there's going to be a 'MasterChef' next year where all the "contestants" are Godlike Geniuses who shall parade before us mere mortals and allow the kissing of rings and the washing of feet with hair. Something like that. Ten's attempts at trying to make people see how fun they are are starting to seem aggressive. Although given the massacre I've been reading about over there today (Bill Woods, Ron Wilson, etc), Ten should consider promoting their news bulletins with a shot of an empty studio with a slowly revolving swivelchair and the sound of crickets. Maybe a blinking fluoro.

Commenter

darren

Date and time

November 13, 2012, 12:25PM

How does putting on the second episode of Homeland a week earlier, when it rates 70k less then the earlier episode of Homeland that was delayed by a week longer prove that reducing the delay increases the audience? It would seem to prove the reverse.

And if Social Network rated 500k less than the final of House Husbands and Bones. for which there was no change in delay. went up 100k as a result but the less delayed episode of Homeland only went up 20k why is the delay a significant variable.

Homeland's ratings have ranged from 633 to 713k so why is a fluctuation of the same magnitude as the variability significant?

Variability, less competition from Channel 9 and whether or not a Homeland episode was on at 8:40 or 9:40pm seem to be far better explanations for the change in ratings than any switch from illegal downloading to live viewing.

If you look at New Tricks its ratings are down 100k when it is fast tracked. Of course its audience is 80% over 55 so will be less effected by downloading and seasonal factors than Homelands.

Illegal downloading may cost you a few 10s of thousands of live views at most. Screening programmes in summer instead of winter and with production disruptions can cost you 500k viewers.

Of course we shall see if Channel 7 are right about this when Revenge, Downtown Abbey screen next year.

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